“To me that’s not abnormal at all,” said Ms. Ewing, a consultant at the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites in Hyde Park who led a recent tour. “In fact, Eleanor speaks to me frequently. This was a powerful, powerful example of a life.”

Though she never held elected office, the wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is widely considered to be the most influential first lady ever. Joan Hoff, a presidential historian, in a letter to The New York Times in 1996, went so far as to say that “largely because her husband was disabled, Mrs. Roosevelt acted in effect as his vice president, representing him all over the country.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt and Val-Kill: Emergence of a Political Leader,” which opened on June 1, is on permanent display. It tracks Mrs. Roosevelt’s unusual road to activism and introduces the people who journeyed with her, particularly Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, Mrs. Roosevelt’s partners in a number of business enterprises before, during and after the Roosevelts arrived at the White House in 1933.

Frank Futral, a curator at Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites in Hyde Park, started planning the show five years ago. It is getting funding from the nonprofit Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership.

The timing for the show’s launch worked out well, Mr. Futral said, because it coincides with renewed interest in the life of Mrs. Roosevelt. “I think people are realizing what went on here in the 20s and 30s constitutes a really special moment in time,” he said, “and they’re responding to that now, at our own moment.”

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Top: the first lady on 16-millimeter film. Bottom: a sketch by Nancy Cook for a tavern table.CreditGregg Vigliotti for The New York Times

He added: “A lot of different constituencies consider Eleanor Roosevelt to be their own. She’s this incredible springboard: People look to her to figure out how to put progressive ideas into action, because she pursued these really serious issues and had a tremendous amount of influence, but she was also a lighthearted, fun, spirited person.”

Mrs. Roosevelt’s lighter side is captured at the entrance to the show, in Stone Cottage, a six-room house and one of six buildings on the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site campus. In a three-minute film reel that includes recently digitized 16-millimeter footage acquired from Ms. Dickerman’s estate, Mrs. Roosevelt swims in the Val-Kill pool and plays with her grandchildren.

Those scenes are followed by a clip of a precocious Shirley Temple arriving for a visit and the Roosevelts’ celebration of the president’s birthday in the cottage’s main room. Another film includes footage of Mrs. Roosevelt propped up on her elbow while reading on the lawn.

The president’s retinue of advisers and Mrs. Roosevelt’s network of progressive thinkers and an occasional head of state went to Val-Kill to discuss business — but also to swim, play lawn tennis and socialize. Mr. Futral used the term “picnic diplomacy” to describe the atmosphere at Hyde Park.

The Roosevelts “got people together in this relaxed, easy setting where everyone felt comfortable and had a good time, but they were still working all the time,” Mr. Futral said.

Stone Cottage was built in 1926 to be a showroom for Val-Kill Industries, a furniture manufacturing company Mrs. Roosevelt formed with Ms. Cook and Ms. Dickerman. Val-Kill was an exercise in social reform for the trio, who were “inseparable best friends” for a time, and whose working partnership lasted more than 20 years, Ms. Ewing said. Mrs. Roosevelt met Ms. Cook and Ms. Dickerman through their work in the Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Committee in 1922.

“Val-Kill Industries grew out of their humanitarian ideas,” Ms. Ewing said. “They wanted to create a model for how to adequately support an agricultural life” — a way for farmers to earn money during the winter months and stave off poverty.

A larger building behind Stone Cottage, Val-Kill Cottage, served as the factory. It later became Mrs. Roosevelt’s home and is open for guided tours. “This idea of embracing handicrafts, of introducing a small shop to make money, was an experiment that became a model for a New Deal initiative,” Ms. Ewing said.

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Stone CottageCreditGregg Vigliotti for The New York Times

Ms. Cook, the furniture designer, moved into Stone Cottage to oversee Val-Kill, which operated on-site until 1936, when the Great Depression hobbled the business. Several pieces of the early-American-style Val-Kill furniture, including tables and chairs, as well as small pewter pieces and woven works the factory produced, are on display. So are vestiges of Mrs. Roosevelt’s marketing efforts. They include her Val-Kill Industries business card — possibly the only one in existence — and photos of Mrs. Roosevelt showing Val-Kill furniture for sale in the Roosevelts’ Manhattan townhouse. Other photos show Mrs. Roosevelt at major department stores in New York and other cities to promote Val-Kill furniture.

“Some people found that disgraceful,” Mr. Futral said. “There was an idea that the president’s wife shouldn’t be schlepping her wares.”

Mrs. Roosevelt also worked with Ms. Cook and Ms. Dickerman on the Women’s Democratic News, a monthly newspaper promoting activism and lobbying for the Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Committee; examples of the paper, printed from 1925 to 1935, are on view. So is a yearbook from the Todhunter School for girls in Manhattan (it merged with the Dalton School in 1939), which the women purchased and ran together. Mrs. Roosevelt taught and Ms. Dickerman was the principal.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s closeness with Ms. Cook and Ms. Dickerman, who were romantic partners, according to Ms. Ewing — “Marion probably came from their apartment in Manhattan every weekend to be with Nancy here at the cottage,” she said — has led to speculation about Mrs. Roosevelt’s sexuality.

“People come with misconceptions, especially that Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt didn’t like each other,” Ms. Ewing said. “People think she washed her hands of her husband after she discovered he had an affair” with Lucy Mercer, a secretary, or that the president built Val-Kill to keep his wife away from him.

The exhibition seems to rebut that view of the relationship with a series of documents and photographs showing the president working side-by-side with Mrs. Roosevelt, Ms. Cook and Ms. Dickerman in their planning for Val-Kill.

Ms. Ewing said she does not doubt that the affair and that her husband’s polio, contracted in 1921, “had a tremendous effect on Eleanor. But I think traditional marriage didn’t suit her. She wanted to live on her own terms. I think these incidents might have given her the freedom to pursue the life she wanted to live.”

“The time they spent here was happy and productive,” Mr. Futral said. “No one could have predicted how much influence this setting would have.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt and Val-Kill: Emergence of a Political Leader,” on permanent display at the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, 56 Val-Kill Park Road, Hyde Park; (845) 229-9422 or nps.gov/elro. Open daily, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission to the exhibition at Stone Cottage is free; tickets for a tour of Val-Kill Cottage, the former factory, are $10.

“Eleanor Roosevelt and Val-Kill: Emergence of a Political Leader,” on permanent display at the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, 56 Val-Kill Park Road, Hyde Park; (845) 229-9422 or nps.gov/elro. Open daily, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission to the exhibition at Stone Cottage is free; tickets for a tour of Val-Kill Cottage, the former factory, are $10.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section WE, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Eleanor Roosevelt, Up Close. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe